Questlove Supreme: Morris Day

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. All Right, y'all,
this is gonna be a long one. You ready, And
I'm talking about the introduction. All right, here we go.
All right, let's see how good I am at winging this.

(00:20):
Here we go.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
All right.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
So, uh, ladies and gentlemen, this is Quest Love Supreme
and we're with Sugar Steve Laiyah and unpaid Bill fan Tickeelo.
I gotta pour out some wheat grass for the brothers
who ain't here picnic. Yeah, So I just want to
tell you guys alone, you know, my distinguished QLs CO stars,

(00:43):
that I'm offering in advance a full apology because you
know we already we already know that I'm cuckoo for
anything purple related. But unlike our distinguished guest today, I'm
throwing all of my cool out the window.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
All my professionalism and whatever so called journalistic integrity I
had is gone. I'm going fool. Chris Farley, Paul McCartney,
SNL interview mode. Right now, you guys aren't encouraged, you're
encouraging me. Trust me. This is gonna be bad, and
I'm look. Let me also preface by asking my guests

(01:22):
to forgive me for all my levels of nerdom for
this particular episode. Our guest today is probably the last
plank of the original Purple squad or army, to whom
I have not revealed my true geekdom. I've exhausted my
I've exhausted my batteries on name Jimmy, Sheila Apples, Jill, Mark, Wendy, Lisa, Susannah, Allen, James, Shoot, Bobby, Jesse, Terry,

(01:47):
even Brenda, Susan and I, like Saint Paul, I've exhausted
my batteries asking dumb ass questions to every member of
that squad except for our guest today. And that's on purpose.
It's on purpose because I knew there was going to
be a day in which we would get him as
a guest on our esteemed webbee winning podcast. All right,

(02:12):
and so okay, that was the preface. So here's the
actual introduction. Yo, man, you only get this one moment once.
All right, So, ladies and gentlemen. I was as I
was prepping notes earlier, and notes it's like a small
post it. As I was prepping notes, I realized that
almost in every case of history, like once you reached

(02:34):
that twenty year mark revisionist license sort of kicks in.
So that said, I'll say it right here that our
guest is probably my gateway drug to the Purple Kingdom.
And I'm just saying that because I remember when Prince's
debut was on the radio back in seventy eight, when

(02:55):
Soft and White debuted on the radio. It was only
because I remembered it, because because it was literally two
minutes after my dad had to break the news to
my mother that my grandfather just died. So for the longest,
my Prince association was that song I was listening to
while my mom was sobbing on the kitchen floor, you know,
crying to death. And so for the next four to

(03:16):
five years, Prince was more of a fixture on like
my sister's girlfriend in his bedroom walls and all that
high school ride on magazine stuff. And don't get me wrong,
I mean I duck some joins as a kid, but
you know, I was kind of teen Jackson. And then
shout out to my friend in sixth grade, Reginald Chieves,
who told me that his older brother told him that

(03:41):
our guest today and Prince were down with each other.
And then he pulls out a radio, one of those
realistic radio shack cheap things, and he transforms my life
by playing me the entire ten minute version of cool
and instantly, as a sixth grader, I was upset. I mean,
records were five to ninety nine back then, so I

(04:03):
mean I broke the piggy bank purchased the album Dahn.
You know I turned that I'm down on the bad
parts whatever. My parents are like super Christian. But the
next thing I knew, me and my entire sixth grade squad,
for the first time in our lives, had brand new
heroes to look up to who were not born in Gary, Indiana.
So that entire summer, like all of our Jordash Sergey

(04:26):
o Valente begging, all that went out the window. And
thanks to my science teacher who thought that the Time
guys looked like the second coming of like Louis Jordan
and the Tempanty five. He told us, well, if you
guys want to dress like those guys, you gotta go
to the five and Time. So you know, I've been
avoiding going to the Goodwill all of my life. No
one wants to go to the Goodwill Salvation Army. But

(04:49):
now me and my whole crew are privy to a
secret the world doesn't know about, which is basically, you
can cop a pair of baggies for five bucks. Look
sharp as hell. Pull all the Jains in sixth grade.
Shout out to Monocha. Jordan looks, this is just as
awesome now as fifty as she did when she was ten.
But basically our parts are lated because now we're buying

(05:09):
all these cheap suits looking good and they don't have
to spend the money. So yes, only because of our guests.
Our guest gave Prince the green light, not the opposite
in my world that I gave Prince the green light
and eighty two and then caught up afterwards, so you know,
because Prince Vans want to swear that they were all
down since the beginning, and no, make no mistake. If

(05:31):
it wasn't for Mars e Day, my entire music direction
probably would have went to either I don't know, Luther
Manjos or Lelo Thomas. I don't know. God is here
with us, ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for
Mars e Day. This is probably the longest introduction I've
ever done. It's gonna say I was like it shows
over now.

Speaker 4 (05:53):
The disclaimer this is the first.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
Right now, but it's okay, yeah, you know. I mean,
when I really love a guess, I'll geek out. So
thank you. I can't even think you enough. I have
a gazillient questions. Actually, I want to jump ahead to
a question I've been dying, dying, dying to know. So
every interview that I've heard you recall your story. Of

(06:16):
course you get to the part where you realize that
Prince is about to choose Bobby Z as a drummer
and not you, clearly the more skilled drummer. And you know,
most Prince fans and most QLs listeners know kind of
know what time it is whatever, so we kind of
dig the reason why Prince did the ban outfit the

(06:36):
way he did, sort of after Slide the Family Stone.
But what I want to know is, in light of
everything that's happened for you, if you were able to
have a time machine and this is not even a
you know, to bring Prince back a live thing, but
if you were able to get back in the time
machine and go back to nineteen eighty and you knew

(06:57):
there was a chance for you to get in the
revolution as a drummer instead of the path you're on
right now? What what what? What path are you choosing?
Are you choosing to still be his drummer or your career?

Speaker 3 (07:12):
Well, first of all, brother quest, I want to thank
you for that that that grand intro, My brother. You know,
I almost forgot that I was a guest.

Speaker 5 (07:24):
I was just like.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
The host.

Speaker 5 (07:29):
How many pages, you know.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
But but that's an interesting question. I liked that question
because in the moment back then, I definitely would have
chose to be the drummer because I was all about
drumming and that was my life, you know, my security blanket,
and that's what I did every day. That's what I
skipped school to do. That's what I aspired to do.

(07:54):
But looking back now, you know, hindsight, you know, I'm
glad that I was kind of pushed, if you will,
into the position that I'm in because you know, I
found another aspect of my abilities that that I.

Speaker 5 (08:12):
Didn't really know about.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
Mm okay, because I still feel like, and I try
to think of the logic, I'm like, wait a minute,
you were given you were either given a choice to
be like from my personal position, like my dad wanted
to be opposite for me, my dad wanted me to
be a session drummer because you know, in my mind,
I'm like, no, I want a career like I don't.

(08:36):
I don't want to drum for Anita Baker, like I
want to be the guy that owns the stadium that
she plays it like. I always thought that. So for me,
I was I would just read when you say, like
a man, he incused me as this drummer, and I'm like, yeah,
but you got something better. But then I thought about it,
Maybe playing with Prince as a musician is fun, and

(08:59):
perhaps in him you found someone that's like a level
of musicianship that you respected. And you know, it wasn't
about being lucrative or having more money or whatever. It
was about like, oh, this is where my joy really is.
And so I always wondered that, Well, the thing is,
it wasn't a choice like that.

Speaker 3 (09:19):
And I never thought that drumming for Prince would be
fun because he was probably one of the.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
Worst of tax masters.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Yeah, if you will, you know that you could work under.
So it wasn't about that. But at that point I
never really considered being a lead singer. I was a drummer,
and so that's all I knew, and I wanted to
play drums, and I'm thinking, you know, my man's got
this deal. Man, he's like Warner Brothers. He's about to
hit the big stage. I want to be a part

(09:48):
of that. And that was, you know, all that I
was thinking about.

Speaker 5 (09:52):
At that moment.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
Okay, okay, I see. So you didn't think like, oh,
this guy's going to be so prolific that he's going
to need other outlets and channels to express himself, and
so I could be that outlet or something.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
Yeah, the time didn't exist in that moment, so I
get it. You know, that came about later, and you know,
like I said, I'm very glad that it did, because
you know, I found something that I can do even
better than drummings. So you know, it all worked out.

Speaker 4 (10:19):
We asked when and where did he hear your voice
to think that you needed to make another decision.

Speaker 3 (10:25):
You know, we were in a I was in Princes
Group Grand Central back in the day when we were
like teenagers, and you know, I would sing a couple
of songs from the drums and I would even come
out in front and are percussionists at the time, would
would go back play drums, I'd come out and sing.
So he knew that I could sing, but he didn't

(10:46):
know about the front man, you know, but he did.
He's the one responsible.

Speaker 4 (10:50):
You know.

Speaker 3 (10:50):
We tried when we were putting the time together. We
tried Alexander O'Neil. We tried a handful of other singers
and it just didn't work out. And so, you know,
Prince was like, well, why don't you do it? And
you know, I had to like stop and think about that.
I was like, because I'm going to be the drummer
in the band. He said, no, you need to be

(11:11):
the singer. I said, I don't know how to lead
a band. He said, put your hand in your pocket
and be cool. I said, I can do that.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
Good advice, all right. So it's funny to say that
because I'm actually working on I'm working on a book
right now. There's a part, there's a chapter where I
actually kind of explore the idea of what black cool is.
Alice Walker's daughter, Rebecca Walker, she does this, she does

(11:43):
this essay about a woman on the New York subway
and this black woman gets on She's like gorgeous. She
sits down and Alice Walker immediately knew that her number
one weapon was the way that she ignored people. So
like this drop dead gorgeous walks on the tree, she
sits and immediately Alice Walker notices like five guys like

(12:07):
kind of oogling her. But the more that she ignores them,
the more that they want her. And it's almost like
she said that that's the story of black cool, where
you know, normally we're taught to please and play kate,
you know Motown's things like you know, go to charm school.
You know, we're the right thing. Da da da da da,
or you know minstrel se era entertainment where you gotta

(12:29):
sort of shuck and jive your way into people's hearts
and disarm them, whereas cool is where you're holding everything back,
which leaves mystery and it makes people want to know
you more, like that sort of thing. It's so weird
now seeing her her breakdown of what cool means and
now kind of revisiting what the time represented because you know,

(12:51):
I guess for people that weren't around at that period,
like you, you guys to me were kind of what
NWA thought they were and I don't mean and just
in terms of you know, NWA ride like the most
dangerous group of all type. But the thing is is

(13:12):
that they overdid it so it became cartoony and then entertainment,
whereas the time was like dead pan serious like de Niro,
like you don't know if they're serious or not. You don't.
It's like hid your daughters like that sort of thing. So,
I mean, there was I've never seen a black group
not so eager to please or sort of like unbothered,

(13:32):
like you know, we could take her to leave you
Like That's how it looked to me when I was
seeing you guys when as a kid, like, oh, these
guys don't care like which you've just never seen that
before in a black group, because most black groups like
were eager, you know, happy to do.

Speaker 4 (13:46):
That was that the plan war is like, was that
the plan y'all already knew what you're cool was gonna be,
and it was no going back and forth as to
what we're doing and what we're gonna look like and
how we're gonna rep.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
Well, you know, there was an evolution of cool, okay,
and quite like Quest was saying, and in the very beginning,
it was a very laid back cool where people had
to invite themselves into the room with us.

Speaker 5 (14:09):
But you know, I think you.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
Know, as it evolved, you know, it became more of
an extrovert type of cool, and you know, it was
just it was an evolution.

Speaker 5 (14:19):
But yeah, we definitely, you know, back in the early
days had that mystique.

Speaker 3 (14:25):
It's like, you know, when we did, when I did
do my laugh or whatever, you know, it's like, is
he laughing?

Speaker 4 (14:32):
What?

Speaker 3 (14:33):
You know, what's he laughing about? You know what does
what time?

Speaker 5 (14:36):
Is it mean?

Speaker 3 (14:36):
You know what is all this about? So you know,
we kind of had people guessing, you know.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
Wanting wanting to be in on the joke. Yeah. Yeah,
I made you want to be down with them that way.
I think Maris, what was your what was your first
musical memory?

Speaker 5 (14:51):
It went way back.

Speaker 3 (14:52):
You know, because I kind of just came into the
world with the notion that I was going to be
involved with music, you know, born in fifty six, you know,
and I can remember listening to the Beatles on our
little am radio that we had, and you know, then

(15:14):
later I remember doing you know the James Brown running
around my you know, the house in the projects and
fruit of the looms on doing the splits trying to
do James Brown and all that, and then sixty four
comes around. We were one of the first, you know,
let you know how what priorities were back then, but
we had one of the first color TVs in the projects,
so all that. Back then, I was watching bandstand man

(15:40):
and I'm watching the Supremes at four tops, you know,
all these motown acts on bandstand and I was like,
that's what I want to do, you know. So those
were my early memories, you know, of music. But I
just it was just.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
In my blood, okay. And what was it about the
drums that? How did you come to be a drummer?
And were there any other instruments that you played?

Speaker 3 (16:05):
Yeah, I went through them all, you know, I went
through I wanted to play drums first and foremost, but
you know, you probably know in school, everybody takes drums first.
So the drums were never available, you know, and I
was always late to register for what I wanted to play. So,
you know, I played the saxophone. I got pretty good

(16:28):
at that. That was the first time I got invited
to be in a band, but I didn't want to
play saxophone in a band, so I passed on that
then I went to the bass. The only base they
had was the upright bass. I said, well, I'm not
lugging this home to practice. So you know, I played
a few different instruments, but the drums just stood out,

(16:51):
you know, And so I beat on my mom's couch
and pots and pans until she finally caved in and
bought me my first drum set. And you know it
was that was just really love at.

Speaker 5 (17:03):
First sight or whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
But that was it for me.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
So I know that you're a left handed drummer along
with Jellybean is also a left handed drummer, or at
least am I assuming that you're also left handed? I am, okay,
that's weird. I'm left handed too, but still I play.
I play drums in traditional way. Yeah yeah, so or

(17:28):
yeah backhanded. The thing is is that you know, I
first saw my first backhanded drummer, like in the late seventies.
So like when you're setting up the drums and you
decide that this is the way I want to face
and this is my positioning, Like no one tried to
correct you and say, well you should be ambidexterrous or

(17:49):
drum on both sides. Or like, how did you wind
up drumming what we would call and reverse?

Speaker 3 (17:57):
They say, Brother, you asking me questions that make me
question myself.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Right now, welcome to quest love, superior. Man, this ain't
gonna be the So tell us about junkle love. I
already told you you've heard that question. But I already
told you, man, I'm a nerd out.

Speaker 5 (18:13):
No, for real, I appreciate that. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
I just think when I got my first drum set,
you know, I'm down in the basement, you know, pulling
out the box and setting it up, and I just
gravitated toward having my snare, you know, on on my
right side. And you know, I just that's just how
I set them up, and I just continue.

Speaker 5 (18:36):
To play that way.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
Okay, So doesn't that make it hard to quote casually
sit in like, do you have the ability to actually
play the opposite way?

Speaker 5 (18:46):
No?

Speaker 3 (18:47):
No, I always you know, I can't switch the whole
set around, but I can at.

Speaker 5 (18:52):
Least switch there and the high hat.

Speaker 3 (18:55):
Man, it makes the feeld sound interesting when you're going
back towards around.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
Okay, Okay, I see that. I don't I know that
uh Garibaldi is holds dear to your heart, but like
was he was he your who's your first drumming hero?

Speaker 5 (19:16):
Oh my, my drumming heroes were definitely all the James
Brown drummers, you know.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
And and and and and listening you know, back to
can't stand it and I got the feeling and stuff.
I mean to me, the pockets and the meters brothers
came up with was nothing short of incredible. And I
definitely see where Garibaldi got his chops from listening to them.

(19:42):
And but I just there was a technical way that
he put it together that I I just thought was
very clever. But definitely all the JB's drummers in the
early days and still to this day for me.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Okay, well, I know that at some point you guys
were all under the same management. Have you ever got
into talk or get cool with Dave Garibaldi at all?

Speaker 5 (20:03):
Or we've talked a couple of times.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
You know, I go, you know, to a show when
I whenever I can catch him when I know he's drumming,
and you know, he he knows you know that.

Speaker 5 (20:14):
That I did.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
His style, but you know that's not the extent of it.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
Okay, So just like nice, pleasant trees, but never like, yeah, yeah,
that's it, guys, call you ol yo man, check this
thing out. Okay, So you know, we asked, we asked
Jimmy jim his version of this. Can you break down
your version of growing up in Minneapolis as far as

(20:42):
you know, the side of town you grew up on,
where the cool side of town was, the side of
town you don't go to radio socially like, could you
just give us a kind of a run of what
your your preteen life was in Minnesota.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
My preteen life, you know in Minnesota was I pretty
much lived in the don't go to areas.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
Oh, you live on the other side of the tracks?

Speaker 3 (21:09):
Yeah, okay, you know, both sides south side and north
side were the areas that if somebody said, hey, where
should I not go in Minneapolis, they would have said both.

Speaker 5 (21:20):
Sides of the town that I lived on.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
But what my experience and my takeaway from Minneapolis is,
I can't hate on it because that's obviously where I
really found myself and musically and in a great circle
of musicians. But at the end of the day, my
experience in Minneapolis, I'm not surprised with the whole George

(21:43):
Floyd situation because I saw Minneapolis as being a racist town.

Speaker 5 (21:51):
And it just doesn't. It didn't surprise me.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
First avenue, which Prince chose to glorify, didn't really even
cater to to black at all.

Speaker 5 (22:05):
You know, it was all about rock.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
Bands and husky. Yeah, we didn't hang out there at
all and never really felt welcome there. So you know,
that was just you know, it was interesting that he
chose that and it worked out, but that's not the
you know, the purple Ring Minneapolis is not the Minneapolis
that I.

Speaker 5 (22:24):
Grew up in.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
So you guys had to build that utopian because like, okay, yeah,
I was one of those people that like, you know
that the modern aray theme, the modern air scene where
you know, you and Apples are sitting in the audience
with your champagne and all these black and white and
mixed race people or just dance. Like in my mind,

(22:45):
I thought like, oh, Minnesota's this utopian sort of you know,
this mythical utopian place that we need to go to.
But that was basically something that you guys had to build.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
Hey, you know what, you know, I just there's good
and bad people, you know, but you know, Minneapolis grew
to be that because so many people saw Purple Rain.
And I think Prince did a great job of making
Minneapolis really look like this music mecca and this melting
pot and you know it, I don't know, you know,
but it it wasn't like that, you know, And I

(23:25):
think he helped he helped the city a lot by
choosing to use First Avenue and glorify it like that.

Speaker 5 (23:35):
You know, I'm not.

Speaker 3 (23:35):
Trying to, you know, sound lean in one direction the other.
Had a lot of good white friends and all of that.
But I was, you know, stopped by the cops a lot,
you know, thrown on the hood of my car in
front of my five year old daughter at the time
over really trivial stuff.

Speaker 5 (23:52):
So when you were it was on the way, it
was on the way, you know. But but still, you.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
Know, I had one of the first uh you know,
I was one of the first brothers you know, bought
a porch back in nineteen eighty you know, two and Stopford,
you know, just having a high end car.

Speaker 5 (24:13):
So you know, it was just.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
It was it was crazy stuff, you know.

Speaker 4 (24:17):
So wait, can I ask what that being said? Now?
I want to know about your people then, because like
where were your parents from and what was their background.
I know you said you grew up in the projects,
but who were who were your parents?

Speaker 3 (24:29):
Well, my parents, we're all out of Illinois. So I
was born in Springfield, Illinois, and you know, all my
folks were like Springfield, Decatur, Illinois, Chicago, that circle down there.
And you know, a couple of my relatives moved up
to Minneapolis. And the story goes, and like I always
like to say, it's in.

Speaker 5 (24:49):
The book, you know, but you know, my mom took.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
Us up to Minneapolis.

Speaker 6 (24:57):
We were supposed to be going to Cali, and I
was sold the looking forward to that, and we stopped
in Minneapolis to visit my sick aunt, so my mom said.

Speaker 5 (25:07):
And we ended up there for the next twenty years.
And I was a little bitter about.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
That, I understand, But it got good, you know, it
got really good.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
You know.

Speaker 5 (25:15):
I met some really good people.

Speaker 3 (25:17):
I met Prince, I met Andre Simone and all of
my guys, you know, because I couldn't find myself. I
wasn't an athlete, and I wasn't popular in school for
no particular reason.

Speaker 5 (25:29):
So once I got.

Speaker 3 (25:30):
In the band, and once I found myself with the music,
then all of sudden, you know what I mean, life
changed for me. So Minneapolis for me was the place
to be.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
Okay in the idea of well, first of all, I'm
still trying to wrap my head around the fact that
and I'm going on Jimmy Jam's account about how radio
was at the time. How are you guys getting culture?
Like it's baffling to me that for a group of people,

(26:03):
and meaning that all of you in Minnesota who basically
dictated what black culture would be in entertainment from the
eighties on, and that's you know, music, attitude, style, all
those things for you guys to not even have that
foundation to even know to build upon it. Like, how

(26:24):
are you learning about whatever was hipping black in the
day if it's not in Minnesota? Like how are you
getting what's your internet? How do you know about the Meters?
How do you know about a group called heat Wave?
Like how are you getting hip to this?

Speaker 5 (26:41):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (26:41):
So you know, first of all, you got diverse.

Speaker 5 (26:47):
Parents from different parts of the country.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
Moving from Chicago to Minneapolis, moving from California to Minneapolis,
and they're bringing their record elections. And then also we
had back in the day it was called KUXL am
radio station that played all the soul music and it
broadcasted from maybe eight in the morning til the sundown

(27:15):
and had like a five block radius. But listen to
you know, you could get you know, all of the
new music there. And then so then we would hear
the new Parliament Funkadelic, we would hear the new.

Speaker 5 (27:29):
Commodores or whatever.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
And then we would go to the mom and pop
and we say, hey, when do you get when this record?
When is this record coming in? And they would tell
us we'd be waiting on this record. And then on
the other hand, you know, we could listen to the
groups like the Commodores and Diana Ross and Lou Rawls
and that had surface to pop radio, and we hear
their music, and then we would hear the pop music.

(27:52):
And then so this is in our brains when we
sit down to say we're going to write a song,
and then we're thinking Parliament Funkadelic, We're thinking James Brown,
but then we're hearing you know, all of the pop
bands in our brains and so you know, these melodies,
you know, kind of meld together and and I think
that's how we really came up with what we ended up.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
With oh okay, I see, I see, I'm familiar with
the kind of mixture of Enterprise slash Grand Central slash
Flight Time amalgamation. But were there any other bands in
the area that you were frightened of or just like, yo,

(28:35):
they're gonna make it, or or even other people who
were from the area, like the d trained guys, or
even the what's his name rock Rocky Robins like or
the Lips incorporated people like non Purple associated Minneapolis musicians
like the other guys. How fierce was the competition or

(28:57):
was it just like the four main groups that eventually
wound up working all together.

Speaker 3 (29:04):
The competition was amazing. It felt like there was a
band on every block. But for some reason, I always
felt like, you know, and flight Time, you know.

Speaker 5 (29:16):
Was amazing. You know.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
There was a group called the Family that Sonny Thompson.
I think Sonny plays in one of the spinoff Prince
bands right now. And he's the guy that came by
and he plays everything like Prince did. I think he
taught Prince some things. And he's the guy that really
came by and taught me my first real drum beat
and how to really start mashing on the drums, and

(29:38):
he was that kind of guy. But you know, there
was the competition was fierce. But the reason why I
got in Grand Central was because I went to a
high school dance. I thought I was going there to
see a girl, to meet up with a girl. I
saw them plan and I forgot all about.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
The girl that you were on the day.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
I stood there right in front of the band and
I was a mesmerized. You know, you got Prince thirteen
years old on the guitar, Andre Simone, his Prince's cousin,
Charles Smith, they call him Chaz. These guys are playing
Santana Hendrix, They're playing everything like they're twenty one years old.

(30:21):
Prince is doing the amazing guitar solos at that age,
and I just said, man, you know, and I've been
wood shedding on the drums for years at that point,
and I said, I got to be a part of this.
And you know, my whole point is I got to
know Andre Simone. He came by my house one day.
It's in the book Ques, you know, you know, and

(30:44):
we were skipping school and he heard me play drums, man,
and you know, I played some Garabaldi's Soul Vaccination with
his hip, you know, and I'm firing up all my
grooves and I stopped playing and he's looking at me
like eyes all stretch. I was like, what, man, He's like,
I didn't know you could play like that. And he said,

(31:05):
you know, we're having trouble, you know, with a little
you know, our drummers chasing women. He's not showing up
a rehearsal and everything. We're looking, you know, to replace
him and looking for somebody serious. You should come by
and bring you drums, you know, let Prince hear you.
So I take my drums over there, I set them up,
I started firing up the grooves. We do some of
the songs. I'm I'm, you know, doing my thing, and

(31:26):
you know, so we stopped. Prince, you know, was a
man of very few words, even back then. He's looking
at me very mysteriously. You never really said shit to me.
But then Andre came to me and he's like, man,
you know, Prince loved it. You're in. So my point
is that I felt like I was getting into a

(31:46):
superior situation.

Speaker 5 (31:48):
From the time that I got into Grand Central.

Speaker 3 (31:51):
So I already felt like I was in a band
that was even as fierce as the competition was. I
felt like I was in the best band in Minneapolis
at that point in time.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
Wow, Okay, often this name comes up anytimes we do
these types of episodes, and I never ask, and I
got to ask you. The common denominator between everyone associated
with Minneapolis that the name holds holdly is the name

(32:25):
of Sonny Thompson. But is there a reason why he
was never in the first draft of any of these
projects coming up like he did you guys ever figure like, oh,
how can we get Sonny down with us? Or was
he just so advanced that, you know, you guys never
even considered that he'd be down with y'all. Or because

(32:46):
everyone speaks of Sonny Thompson with this like religious like
the best thing I've ever seen.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
He's an amazing musician and way ahead of his time,
and his name I do believe came up to be
in the time. But I had a different idea myself
of what the band should be. And I already have
my eyes focused on Jimmy jam and Terry Lewis because
I had heard them play. I knew Flight Time was
an amazing band, and I heard they had done some

(33:16):
songs produced some songs on Cynthia Johnson, who was the
one that ended up saying funky Town and yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah, And so I already had that in mind,
and you know he didn't argue with me on that,
but I believe he wanted Sonny in the band.

Speaker 5 (33:31):
And you know, he had his idea what the.

Speaker 3 (33:32):
Time should be, and I had mine and fortunately, you know,
he he went with my version of the time.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
Okay, cool, So how do you wrestle? Like, what is
the story of how you got kind of your own
all star draft if you will, grabbing these people from
various groups and making your your your own band.

Speaker 3 (33:58):
Oh, you know, it was pretty easy actually, because you know,
everybody knew that. You know, Prince had done this thing.
He had this big deal with Warner Brothers. He showed up,
he went and got the deal, and you know he
always used his pick for his afro, you know, cake cutter.
I don't know if you remember the cake cutters. You
know what I'm saying, that pick with the handle on it.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
Yeah, with that cake cutter. Yes, I'm very familiar with that.

Speaker 3 (34:24):
Yes, he always had his cake cutter. So he went
and got his deal with Warner Brothers. They cut him
a check for eighty g's. We had never seen nothing
like that. They had his name on it, and just
to you know, seal the deal, he said, it's cake
cutter right next to the check.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
You know, so we go.

Speaker 5 (34:44):
That it was for real.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
But anyway, you know, I just wanted flight time, you know, Jimmy,
Terry and Monty and I really wanted Jellybean to be
the drummer, but I was the drummer. So at that
point we were looking at different singers. And that's when
Prince said, hey, why don't you sing? And you know,
at first I wasn't fond of that idea, but then

(35:09):
when I thought about it, I said, hey, that means
jelly Being could be in the band, and so everybody's in.
And meanwhile, you know, when I was playing in enterprise
band A Pleasure, you know, I had heard about this
guitar player down in Rock Island, Illinois who was doing
twenty minute solos where his band would leave the stage
and he'd just stand up there and solo over twenty minutes.

(35:32):
And I said, this has got to be our guy.
And so you know, I told Maridi Holmes, who told
me about Jesse. I said, can you have him come up,
had him come up? He started. He stayed in my
house and my little townhouse, in my living room, on
my couch, and you know, he started playing with Enterprise.
Amazing guitar player. You know, I played Prince a tape

(35:55):
of him playing and Prince said, oh, yeah, that's our
guitar player. So, I mean, you know history, that's pretty
much how it came together.

Speaker 4 (36:03):
Dang, was anybody hard to get? Was it a struggle
with anybody took Evince?

Speaker 5 (36:07):
No, because we were all struggling already.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
So just to be you know, in a group that
you know, under Prince's production company with some promise to
do something big, you know, everybody was in.

Speaker 5 (36:18):
You know.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
Okay, So when you guys are in this period of
your lives, am I assuming that you guys had like
day jobs to go to as well? And how do
you balance like rehearsal versus pocket change? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (36:34):
Well I pretty much failed at every day job I attempted.
You know, I think the longest I last was maybe
six months. And you know, pretty much every job I
ever had, the manager would end up. You know, I'm
that guy singled out that he'd be looking at you know,
two hours into every shift, He's like, call me to

(36:55):
his office. She's like, you don't want to be here,
do you? Like?

Speaker 5 (36:58):
I don't know how to answer that question.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
So anyway, by the time we got to put in
a band together, I was pretty much living with a
girlfriend of mine.

Speaker 5 (37:08):
She was working and.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
Paying the big bills, and I was doing the musician thing,
you know, and making fifty dollars of a show or whatever,
thirty five dollars a show or whatever I made, and
that was pretty much what I did. It was just
all about music at that point in time in my life.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
Okay, I see, I do want to know, is at
any point was Alexander O'Neil at all, like at any
of these rehearsals. I mean, before you know, the eventual
fallout or his exit or whatever. But is there any
point in which it was the Seven of You or
Honor of Jellybean? Was there? Like?

Speaker 3 (37:48):
No, At that point it was it was pretty much
songs that either Prince had cut or Prince and I
had cut, and we were just trying singers out in
the studio. Never as a band, but you know, Alexander
was was was the lead singer of Flight Time, so

(38:09):
they were actively working together at that time.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
Okay, I see, I know that you also, like I assume,
traveled with Prince when he was touring. Well, I assume
that the first major toy did was Rick James, So
I guess you were on that tour with him. Am
I correct? Were you at all like president during the
Rick James Prince shows?

Speaker 5 (38:35):
I think that was over.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
I caught the next round when I came to town
he was doing the Dirty Mind. I think that that's
what I went out with.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
So okay, were you eyewitness to the Rolling Stones incident? Yes,
I was, boy the book. Uh okay, so I've heard
that you know, well, first of all, I know that
you were like recording these shows and being a collector

(39:06):
of these shows. I'm assuming that maybe one of these
shows that I have is your camera work. First of all, yeah,
it's it's who even has the the vision to know
to record themselves every night? To judge, I mean, that's
that's an amazing technology to have, because oh, okay, well,

(39:31):
I believe that the legend is that you know, Mars
would set up the tripod camera and record print shows
on VHS or Beta Max whatever so that Prince could
watch himself, and of course like suckers like me who
indulge a lot in the bootleate market in the last

(39:51):
twenty five years whatever, like all these tapes of surface
and whatnot, and I'm not saying them maybe or maybe not.
I paid a mid five figure for stuff. I don't know.
You gotta do history history, but I'm playing anyway. But
my my question is, yeah, like, who's for me in

(40:13):
eighty eighty one, who's thinking of like purchasing a video
camera recorder and recording these shows night after night like
because it's a rare technology that wasn't a household name
yet until at least eighty three, eighty forty five.

Speaker 5 (40:29):
So yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (40:32):
And it wasn't it wasn't compact technology either. Were talking
big VCR and some pretty nice sized cameras that, yeah,
how do you get the tapes night to night after
night like those big like the big ones like this right? Yeah, yeah,
you know tripod and I had a I had my
own road case case that I was in and so

(40:53):
you know, anyway, that was me after Prince said, hey,
Bobby's he's my drama and He's said, but I'll offer
you a gig to tape the shows.

Speaker 5 (41:02):
So you know, you know, I pay you one hundred
and fifty dollars a week that I'm.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
Like, I can travel and you know, go to shows
and at least, you know, somehow be a part of
this for you know, I said, I'll take it, and
so you know, I was a video on the shows.
And that's something that's stuck with Prince throughout his career.
And I don't care. You know, even when we did
the Musicology tour with him, or the dates that we

(41:28):
did do, he would make everybody his band and everybody
had to go to whatever club he rented out afterwards
and he would have that show on the projection and
everybody had to watch it. Everybody had to.

Speaker 5 (41:46):
Watch it every.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
Yes, that's the next level.

Speaker 4 (41:52):
Like a coach, like he was coach.

Speaker 3 (41:56):
Getting on the musicians. Hey, you were behind on that song,
the whole thing, the whole show, every show he did
in the nightclub though in the nightclub, but.

Speaker 4 (42:07):
It was in the club, but them, you know that.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
Okay, I feel like you should start some shit with
the roots where you don't start play it back like
you for it. But here's the thing though, here's the
thing though, now now, don't feel so bad because you
know they're My nightclub story is the fact that he
took me off turntables and wanted to watch Finding Nemo
in the nightclub.

Speaker 4 (42:31):
You were there, like you yeah, I know, I said,
I remember that.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
Yeah, And it's such like you don't have an embarrassment.
You don't know what the embarrassment it is being a
world class DJ for those of them, what's the story?
So the story is basically, Princess in Philly for the
Musicology tour and I get ten tickets, and in true
a mere fashion, I forgot to count myself as part

(42:56):
of the tens. So I got ten friends. And so
we're walking in one, two, three, four, five, six, seventy nine, ten,
and I realized, shit, I'm eleven. Fuck so who he
said home. It was well, it was like more than
sold out. And it just so happens that Ruth and
him happened to be in a golf cart whizen by,

(43:16):
and I was just like, man, shoot your shot, and
I said, look, I know I got ten tickets from
you guys, but I forgot to conclude myself in the ten.
He thought was silly. He thought it was funny.

Speaker 4 (43:26):
He laughed, and was like, all right, in that moment,
that was the girl that was with you, just so
you know, well there was ten of your moment. Yeah,
way go ahead.

Speaker 1 (43:36):
Oh anyway, My point was that I sat under the
stage and watched the show. But then towards the end
of the show, Ruth rushes to me and says, Prince
does this thing with me. Like my relationship with him
is like I Prince has this thing where he tells
you to do something and automatically you're like, oh, I

(43:57):
work for you, yes, sir, So I'll go to the club. Hey,
run the soundboard, okay. And I'm like at the soundboard, like,
I don't know what I'm doing, but Prince sold me
run the sound play.

Speaker 4 (44:06):
Bass a mirror. It was an error, right.

Speaker 1 (44:11):
So Princeville, have me just do ship. I never did
a month, Like, I've gone to the supermarket to get milk.
I've played bass. I'm like, wait, I don't play bass.
So this one night, this one night, he asked me,
well he he They command me to find him a
nightclub to have uh an after party. And so then

(44:35):
of course I hit up our good friend Stacey Wilson
from Philly cease find me a nightclub. She finds me
a nightclub, but it's a five story walk up and
then at the last minute, Prince is like, and I
want to play pool And so now they got an
hour to find a pool table and and dismantle it
and lug it up five stories to the to the

(44:55):
rooftop of this nightclub. Uh, and I want you to DJ.
So now I got it this Rados, and now I
got to run to my dungeon grab all these records,
so you know, I I do it, and three records in.
Prince obviously didn't take a liking to FAILI I was
playing afrobeat and they're like, put this on instead, and

(45:17):
I'm looking as a DVD and it's Finding Nemo and
I'm like, uh wait, what am I? What am I
supposed to do with this?

Speaker 4 (45:25):
So so Kemp Flores, can you translate that? What was
he trying to say to a mirror in that moment?
I still don't understand.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
Oh really, you don't understand where a person tell you
he's getting fired right now?

Speaker 4 (45:35):
Well, I was hoping that wasn't it. Maybe it was
something else.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
No, Well, he just I've just never seen someone put
a videotape on in the nightclub, like we're in and
the thing is, it's like it's two thousand and four.
So our version of the nightclub is more like Diddy era,
where it's sexy and you know, smoky and lasers and stuff.
And then all of a sudden, like you're here Ellen
DeGeneres and you know, Albert what's his name in Finding Nemo.

(46:03):
We're watching a Pixar film in the club like it
was normal. And now that I know that mars Is
told us that okay, that he just puts tapes on it.
Anything but music on the club just seems weird to me.

Speaker 3 (46:17):
So yeah, well, I'm surprised he don't make it everybody
watch the show because that that's usually what he did.
It was a man, It's like he had to see himself.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (46:29):
I loved that he was a coach. I think that's dope.
That means he's an athlete, Like he's a real athlete.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
When it comes to this, I get it now that
the approach. So I gotta ask, so can you give
us your version of the Rolling Stone show?

Speaker 5 (46:43):
Oh man?

Speaker 3 (46:45):
That was traumatic because you know, you know, I I
know I knew this brother, you know, to his level
of professionalism and his need to be accepted as an artist.
And so I think he's going up there thinking, you know,
he's straight up in billy idol mode, you know, half yeah,

(47:09):
you know, half neckd you know, I'm gonna show him
how I can rock and roll, you know, with the
bikinis and the lake warmers and all that on. And
you know, you're straight up in front of a hardcore rock.

Speaker 5 (47:22):
And roll crowd.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
A lot of these guys were bikers, and you know,
and and and they just wasn't hearing it, man.

Speaker 5 (47:30):
So you know, he comes out.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
And he's doing his thing and uptown and all that,
and all of a sudden, you know, you start hearing
the booze and the beer bottles start flying up on stage.
And I knew, you know, right at that moment that
it was time to start making my way with my
you know, little cameras, camera equipment backstage because it wasn't

(47:51):
gonna be nice.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
So that shows on tape.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
I never saw it on tape, but I taped it,
you know, happened to it.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
Somewhere in this earth.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
Is that show somewhere on this planet?

Speaker 5 (48:05):
That show is on DVR.

Speaker 3 (48:08):
You find it VHS.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
It's labeled it's labeled finding Nemo.

Speaker 5 (48:17):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
Oh my god.

Speaker 4 (48:19):
Wow, Okay, Morris, how long did you keep this job,
the cam cordy, this gig.

Speaker 5 (48:24):
Well, see, that's the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
You know.

Speaker 3 (48:26):
I was just staying close, you know, because when I
I had moved away, you know, when he got his
record deal, I was living down in Gaithersburg, Maryland side
of d C, you know, and so you know, things
didn't work out well for me. So I moved back
to Mini and once he found out that I got back,
he was real happy that I was there. So I

(48:46):
started hanging out, going to rehearsals, and that's when I
kind of said, you know, hey, man, I really like
to be the drummer, and he's like, I have a drummer.
And that's when I got offered the job to video
the shows. And so you know, he told me, you know,
he said, you know, you can use the studio anytime
you want, and of course I took advantage of that.

(49:07):
And so one of the first songs I cut was
this slow funk track and you know, I put the
drums down, then I put the bass down and it
was the party up baseline.

Speaker 5 (49:19):
But I played it way funk here.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
You know.

Speaker 3 (49:21):
I was in a funk mode with it, and he's like,
you know, And so I go home and I come
back the next day to cut some more stuff and
he's like, you know, I like that track that you cut.
He's like, if you give me that track, he said,
I'll give you. I don't know ten k I forget
what he said. He said. Or I'll help you put
a band together. You pick it, I said, And he said,

(49:42):
I'll get your record deal. I said, of course, I'll
take the band and the record deal. Yeah, so that
was pretty much the end of my video career, videoographer career,
and you know, from that point on.

Speaker 5 (49:55):
It really really happened fast.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
You know, he sent he had me sing a couple songs,
he said them the Warner Brothers. They signed the band
and the concept of the time sight Unseen. And so
then we had like two weeks to complete the record
and it was just a whirlwind from there.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
Okay, so it's ten thousand. In my mind, I thought
it was substantial, like twenty twenty five thirty, and I
was doing the math and I was like, wait a minute,
well twenty back in nineteen eighty, that was like seventy
thousand dollars today, Like, I don't know. It's like, of course, yes,

(50:36):
you made the right choice by choosing the band situation,
but I'm also thinking, you know, you could have had
your cake and eat it too, because I don't know
if he's is he even expressing again the need to
have other outlets to express him Like are you seeing
this this ocd obsessiveness to channel more music through other

(50:58):
acts yet, because I'm like, wait, why couldn't you get both?

Speaker 5 (51:02):
Yeah, well, you're right, but you know that.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
Was probably his inside his brain, right, But my brain is,
you know, I can you know, I know that we
can put something nice together. And he'd already played me
as he had played me Get It Up, which he
had cut believe it or not, for the group Brick
and why absolutely, And he had cut it for Brick Brick.

Speaker 5 (51:28):
He sent the song to them. They didn't want it.

Speaker 3 (51:32):
Oh my god, they didn't want it, and I was like, man,
I will take it.

Speaker 5 (51:37):
So it's so yeah, yeah, so.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
Yeah, it's crazy, I know, because they were hot at
the time, you know, and he was just thinking, you know,
he had cut a song that they might like. But
that's real, that's that's a true story, though a lot
of people don't know that.

Speaker 5 (51:53):
I don't even know if that's in the book though it's.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Definitely not in the book by the way, Uh yeah,
Brick Brick's you guys, that's Sleepy Brown's Uh yes, yeah,
Sleepy Brown's father. Okay, So this is what I want
to know. The hearing you speak right now, and I'm

(52:17):
assuming that this is your natural speaking voice. When you're
in the character of Mars Day or when Prince is
in the character of Jamie Starr. Who who is the
figurehead that you guys are. Who's the figurehead to whom
you guys are mocking or or imitating or like where

(52:41):
did this this character? You know, the that that pre Yes,
I've talked to Kat Williams himself and he even said that, yes,
you guys were kind of his impetus for that voice, like,
ain't like me exact who is who is that voice

(53:03):
to what you guys took and perfected? Is that how
brothers talked to Minnesota?

Speaker 4 (53:09):
Now?

Speaker 3 (53:09):
You know what you know? It's it's really everything that
you hear from from my laugh to when I get
into that zone. You know, there's a way that you
talk you know, when you're just seeing chill, more regular mold.
Then there's a way that you talk when you have
hyped up talking to your partners, talking shit, you know
what I mean.

Speaker 5 (53:29):
So it's just it's just a it's just.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
An elevated level if you will, of you know, of
of of my normal self. You know.

Speaker 5 (53:39):
So when I go into that mold, that's pretty much how.

Speaker 3 (53:42):
We were when we were just talking shit to each other,
you know, laughing, and you know, and and and you
know when I when I got in that mold, I
would laugh loud, like I laugh and Prince was like, man,
we got to put that on the record, you know.
So it was just, you know, it was it was
kind of our inner circle, the way we talk to
one another.

Speaker 6 (53:59):
You know.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
Okay, all right, this this this is my favorite part
of the interview. Okay, so now I finally get to
figure or ask you, grill you on the work mode
operation of the tview. So are you the are you
the complete drummer on most of the Times albums.

Speaker 3 (54:22):
I played drums on all most of the early albums,
and I played drums on a few Prince's songs as well, you.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
Know, So that's what I wanted to know what what
Prince songs or other non Time records have you drummed
on that I might not know about.

Speaker 5 (54:40):
I did part of Let's Work. I played all Let's Work,
and Prince, you.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
Know, he kind of he played on it as well,
so he kind of took parts of his his track
and mind. Yeah, I played drums on Controversy. I've yeah
a new power generation.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
Yo.

Speaker 5 (55:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:02):
Man, I played on a lot of his stuff, but
I never, you know, got credit, just like he didn't
necessarily in those days take credit for playing on the
Time stuff. But I played on a lot of Prince's
songs as well.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
Okay, So I'm trying. I've been trying to explain to
people what what the process is because we all, you know,
most most purple heads or whatever, they're very familiar with,
uh chlorine bacon skin, which was initially, I guess the
impetus of it was supposed to be a workout that

(55:36):
would eventually morph into an actual song. But then I
guess it was so good, y'all just let the workout
be the song. So if you guys aren't familiar with
chlorine bacon skin.

Speaker 7 (55:53):
You don't, that's not don't that's nailed symbol. You just
get knowing.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
So Steve is my engineer. So Steve, you know, like
when you set up a click track for me, So
basically Prince would play that the role of the click track,
so Mars would just drummer beat, and to keep Mars
sort of you know, in the zone or whatever, Prince
would set up his bass, set up a microphone the

(56:21):
way that I talked to the guys on the show whatever,
talk shit, whatever, and then you record the drum thing,
and then of course that morphs into something else. In
this one particular case, Chlorine BigGAN Skin actually wound up
being so good it stayed on its own.

Speaker 4 (56:36):
That's what I want to a song.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Yeah, it's it's just a fifteen minute song where Prince
is just talking shit and it's mad hilarious, but it's
also mad funky. So for that song alone, I know
that it was intended to be a work song that
turns into something else. But when it was over, why
didn't you guys turn that song into something else?

Speaker 3 (57:00):
Because I think we were both you know, you know,
just kind of really cool with the way it turned out.
You know, he was talking ship, you know, uh, you know,
at the beginning of the song. We started the song
and he's talking and you know, he's getting on me.
He's like the headphones, headphones on, and then my headphones

(57:20):
were on the floor, so I'm laughing and put my
headphones on. Here. At the end of the song, we
got done, and you know, it was like it was
just so hilarious. We said we got to leave this alone.
We got to just let it be.

Speaker 5 (57:32):
What it is.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
You know. Yeah, I was gonna say, one of the
one of the rarest highest things I've paid for. I
didn't realize that you guys were actually intending to release this, So,
you know, I one one of the up there. There's
there's like a mastered her Her Powers mastered twelve inch

(57:55):
of chlorine that was supposed to see the light of day,
and I guess at the last it was six Nate
or maybe he just had one printed up, one of
one or whatever. But is that how all the songs
were created? So like when you're doing like Wild and Loose,
you know, when you're drumming, are you drumming to something
totally different? And then it eventually morps into Wild and Loose? Yeah?

Speaker 5 (58:17):
Absolutely absolutely.

Speaker 3 (58:18):
It started out as a you know prints on the bass,
which you know, probably one of the funkest bass players.

Speaker 1 (58:24):
I mean, you know exact listen to.

Speaker 5 (58:26):
Seven seven h seven ninety three eleven. Nobody can play
that song. Nobody can play that.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
Song the way he did so exactly.

Speaker 3 (58:34):
So a lot of the songs we just we started
like that, him on bass, neon drums, and then we
would find a pocket or if he had idea of pocket,
he tells me to go there, I'd hold the pocket
and you know, we would just kind of go from there.

Speaker 5 (58:48):
But most of all, most all of our songs.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
That I played on were you know, they start out
as jam sessions.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
So jam sessions and totally different keys and totally other things,
and then you go home, and then you come back
the next day and then that drum performs you gave
turns into something else.

Speaker 3 (59:07):
Yep, possibly that or possibly the actual the actual session itself,
you know. And he was a master at cutting two
inch tape because you know how it was pack in
the day, so you know, he would cut out the
sections that we didn't need and spice them together and
then start overdubling overdubbling from that point.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
You know, so he could raise or splice his own tapes.
Oh yeah, were you guys working on was it a
sixteen track or a twenty four? Like? What board do
you know? Like? The Yeah, the boards that we.

Speaker 3 (59:40):
Started out on sixteen and that's what we get it
up and all cool Girl. All those songs that first
album were cut on sixteen track, and then after that
graduated to twenty four track, and then after that graduated
to two twenty four tracks where we had forty eight tracks.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
You know. Oh okay, I see, okay, So let me
ask about the twin of bacon skin, which is tricky.

Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
Why you big.

Speaker 8 (01:00:09):
Hair, dum heavy, long toll snagly going to funk inhabit
form leather wear bean pole.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
Black was tricky.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
Initially intended as one of these sessions that should turn
into another song, and then again, you guys were just
clowning around and decided, okay, let's just leave this as
as it is.

Speaker 5 (01:00:46):
Well, tricky happened when.

Speaker 3 (01:00:50):
We heard that, I believe it was was it Bootsy?

Speaker 5 (01:00:56):
But anyway, it's either it was either Bootsy or George
George Clinton when I had a song that said Morris
to copy cat.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Immediately after we heard that, we went into the studio
and that was our rebuttal that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Was, it's like why you be wait you.

Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
So toss solid hairdoo have And that was Bootsy.

Speaker 5 (01:01:40):
The Michelan man. That was George Clinton.

Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
So we went in and you know, had a field day,
you know, as a rebuttal to them talking ship about us.

Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
Dude, this okay, this.

Speaker 4 (01:01:51):
Is a cute yo.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Heads are exploded, do you literally? I didn't expect this
because in our mythical made up land, we had decided
that that was directed after the James Brown incident, you know,
the James Brown Michael Jackson, because we thought like, okay,
well he has to be talking about somebody. At first,

(01:02:15):
I just thought that you two were just ranking on
each other because you know, I didn't realize again, like
Prince never made his voice known to us during that
period in real time, so I had no idea that
like the waiter on the skits and the Italian guy
on the walk, I didn't realize that was Prince, right,

(01:02:38):
I'm just thinking that's you and some of the guys,
and so once I became aware of that, then I
was like, well, wait a minute, that's Prince of Mars,
Like who are they talking about? So in my mind,
I was like, okay, nineteen eighty three, I know, the
James Brown incident happened and he was real embarrassed, and
oh maybe that's who he's talking. That is crazy. So
did you ever get actual verification that was actually out

(01:03:00):
you or you know, were they like, no, we were
talking about the actual Mars the cat from the Friskies commercial.

Speaker 5 (01:03:05):
Yeah, now we knew.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Exactly, you know, and I'm not sure, you know, maybe
they thought maybe they thought get it Up was you know,
sort of a parliament funkin deelic groove. And I could
see that, you know, and you know, I could see
the influence of that. But I by no means feel
like we were biting their sound at all.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
But now, I mean they were no strangers to bucking shots,
you know, because like, let's take it to the stage.
They playfully call out you know, Earthwin and Fire and
Rufus and Sly and even you know, the people that
they're down with, but still like playfully doing Wow, man,
I had no clue what so, So was he actually

(01:03:48):
eating chicken while he did that?

Speaker 5 (01:03:50):
No? No?

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
Oh, okay, no, you know what, maybe you mentioned that
I think we might have bought a bucket of chin.

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
Yeah, I was like, I think he was chewing chicken.

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
I think we might have had a bucket the chicken
on hand now that you mentioned it, So that's okay.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
I want to know what was the awareness of your
contemporaries at least Again, the myth of my head was
that you guys were too cool for school. You didn't
listen to nobody else, like nobody like Zap, fuck Them
and whatever. But now that I'm older, I'm like, it's
almost impossible for you guys to not know about the

(01:04:29):
Dazz Band or Zap or even like these new groups
groups coming up like z Look and Real to Real
and Click and you know, all these all these groups
post ady two that were trying to fit into that
mood that you guys were. So, I mean, how aware
were you guys of other groups and their music? Like

(01:04:54):
did you ever come in and say, like, yo, man,
this group called the System from New York listen to
this shit?

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
Yeah, like you know what, But you're you're absolutely right.
We were on we were on that page. But on
a larger scale for us, we were listening to new
wave groups like The Cure and you know, we were
listening to a lot of the cross over the pop
groups and trying to because we'd already you know, we

(01:05:21):
we had the funk thing down. So what we were
trying to do, and if you think about it, you
listen to ice Cream Castles and you know, listen to
the verses on that and the whole vibe of that song.
We were trying to get that that the cure, you know,
we were trying to get that slightly new waves sound
integrated and and and and that's that's really where we

(01:05:45):
were thinking. We were We were already past the funk
thing because.

Speaker 5 (01:05:49):
We had that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
Wow, I never thought of that, So you guys were
aware of Okay, I see, I see it. So humor.
Humor is also another important weapon in the arsenal of
the time, which you know, humanized you guys. And that
was sort of the difference between you know, your presentation

(01:06:13):
and Prince's presentation because your humor, even though it was
inside baseball jokes, it still made us want to be
down with you, and it endeared us to you more
because it showed a side of you, Like Prince didn't
show a sense of humor until way later in his career.
So like, but what I want to know is the

(01:06:34):
fact that you guys would actually stage vis kind of vignettes,
and you know, it's really the precursor to skits that
De La Soul and Wa and them started doing, except
they would actually make skits where you guys would just
do the skits on the record. So like when you're

(01:06:54):
doing songs like the Walk or even Wild and Loose,
Wild and Loose is probably a better example because you know,
I'm assuming that's that's Lisa. Is that Lisa and Jill
Jones talking to each other, them talking to each other
on Wild and Loose when you guys are there.

Speaker 3 (01:07:13):
I actually think it's just some some random girls that.

Speaker 5 (01:07:18):
Come in, you know. But however, on the Walk, that
was that was vanity.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
That was vanity. I know that.

Speaker 5 (01:07:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
But the reason why I'm asking about Wild and Loose
is because, you know, in my mind, over analyzing this song,
I'm like, Okay, there's a thirty two bar break, and
in that thirty two bar break on the left side,
the two girls have to set up the narrative perfectly
where they're explaining how they got your phone number when

(01:07:46):
they talk to you and da da da da. But
then on the right hand you hear you know, you
Jesse or whoever talking shit about the same thing that
they're talking about, and and it's it's coordinated perfectly, and
it doesn't sound casual, like it doesn't sound like it
was just a happy accident, like yes, we're just going

(01:08:06):
to take this thirty two bar break and talk shit,
like there's an actual narrative that goes on. And like
so when it comes to those those those moments in
the time songs when it's time to talk shit or
do humor and I'm talking about the kit KM Make
You Come, or even Chili Sauce or those songs, Like
how important is that or was it just Prince? Like, Okay,

(01:08:30):
I don't have another I don't have a third verse,
so let's just do a skit real quick, Like how
is that organized?

Speaker 5 (01:08:35):
Well, you know, I think it was.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
I think it was more once we got the body
of the song, you know, versus hooks, and you know,
then you know, it was always Prince's plan to make
these to bring our personality to these songs, and you know,
to make them you know, you know accessible, you know
and not I mean, we have the great musicianship.

Speaker 5 (01:08:58):
And then on the other hand, you know, make.

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
It accessible through you know, like these vignettes and a
little comedy in there, and just have fun with it
to you know, just kind of you know, help people
enjoy it. And I don't think that that was the plan
outright at that moment, but you know, that's what it
ended up being. He just wanted to bring personality to
the records. And you know, we always laughed and talked shit.

(01:09:20):
We would go to the club, we would have a
good time, then straight to the studio and you know,
listen to what was on and get that fresh in
our brains and then straight to the studio and start cutting,
you know with with what was hot in mind, and
you know, doing our own thing with it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:37):
Okay, I knew you guys had to present to us
that you were above funk and above you know, like
what what you what you mortals do? Like we're above that. However,
can you just name one or two songs or groups
that like all right? I respect that? Like, I know

(01:10:00):
you guys toured with Zap like yeah to them, were
they like they all right? Or was it like wo
okay this like yeah, yeah, No, Zapp.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
Was a hell of a band. I mean more bounced
to the ounce. Who can deny that?

Speaker 5 (01:10:14):
Man?

Speaker 3 (01:10:14):
That's you know, that's that's one of the funkiest songs,
you know, and and you know that's the way Roger
always presented it. He would make his band like stay
in that pocket, you know how you know, sometimes you
get excited and we we do that and and our temples, yes,
and they're higher than the record is. And you know

(01:10:35):
that was okay because you know, you were in concert,
you know, the energy and and and then the excitement
is there. But Roger always had his band, you know.
It was almost like he would click it out and say,
you know, keep it right there. And it was always
just slow and funky and know and they they always
you know, had a great show.

Speaker 5 (01:10:53):
So you know, I mean, you know, there's thousands of
funk songs that I love.

Speaker 3 (01:11:00):
And could get down with, you know, but you know,
we just we just wanted to present ourselves a little differently,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
Okay, I see what's what's the reasoning behind? You didn't
find it a little unusual that, like all of your
records were just six songs. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:11:21):
It's you know, it's just like would you like a
bucket of twenty four pieces of fried chicken taste all right,
like a sixth piece, that's real good.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
That's the quality, not quantity.

Speaker 4 (01:11:37):
I'm like, no, But as a person who's made a
multi track album in retrospect, is that kind of genius
than a way those did you always get paid?

Speaker 1 (01:11:44):
Is way harder to make a classic with less songs?

Speaker 4 (01:11:47):
Like yeah, to me, it's just contacts, right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:51):
Because all the records that we look at that are
classic are really under forty five minutes innervisions off the wall,
dirty mind? What time is it? Like shorter? You know.
But it's also the thing. The risk of six songs
is like when you shoot your shot, you better hit
that ship right right on target.

Speaker 4 (01:12:12):
That's gotta be confidence.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
So I meant were you were you at all like
uh word? Like okay, Well, after you heard cool and
these songs done, did you know instantly like, oh man,
we're gonna blow up so big? Like did you feel
that at all? Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:12:31):
Yeah, it was It was crazy like that. I felt,
you know that we were really onto something. You know,
when when we finished seven seven seven ninety three eleven,
I'm like thinking, hell, they ain't hurt nothing like.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
This, you know? So right?

Speaker 3 (01:12:45):
You know, it's like you know, we just you know,
we always just felt like we were on point with it.

Speaker 5 (01:12:50):
You know, we were in the moment and.

Speaker 3 (01:12:52):
We knew we were doing something innovative, and you just
felt like we had something different, you know. So you
know I felt real good about you know, uh, each
each song on those six song albums.

Speaker 1 (01:13:06):
What was your life for like two months after the
first Time album at least in Minnesota, Like was like
when did your life transform to whoa?

Speaker 5 (01:13:19):
Well, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:13:19):
Now now I'm this level well, you know, with Reggie
Hammond and in forty eight hours like buy it out.

Speaker 3 (01:13:28):
I'm sure you know, brother, but you know if I
went from you know, trying to stretch my little five
dollars to do the cover charge, to get a drink
to hold onto until the ice cubess milk, you know
by the end of the night, you know, to you know,
to get it offered. You know, bottles of champagne get

(01:13:49):
in for free.

Speaker 1 (01:13:50):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:13:51):
It's like when brothers need something for free, you can't
get it when you don't need it for free.

Speaker 5 (01:13:56):
When I'm actual throwing everything at me for you know,
change like that.

Speaker 4 (01:14:02):
You know, well, I just want to know I want
to circle back to this band leader thing now because
now you are the band leader, and I'm curious about
your evolution as a band leader. And if you thought, Okay,
this is in the beginning, this is who I'm going
to be, but then everything kind of changed for you
because it's a lot of responsibility.

Speaker 3 (01:14:19):
You know, I've never you know, been like you know,
like Prince was a he was a band leader. You
know what I'm saying. You don't play one note, you
don't wear one sock that he doesn't approve of, you know,
and you know everything is controlled and he's in control.
You know, I've never been like that, you know, I've

(01:14:40):
always give him my guys, you know, a little room
to express themselves. Just never been a hands on, like
dictator type of guys. So you know, I you know,
I always took a light handed approach, and I always
found that, you know, kind of like when you let
people express themselves a little more, you get a little
more out of them. And I think that's kind of
what happened with the time. You' The only time that

(01:15:00):
it really we really got clamped down on is when
Prince showed up to rehearsal.

Speaker 4 (01:15:05):
I was going to ask was he thinking he was
a punk, like, come on, man, get him together.

Speaker 3 (01:15:09):
Yeah, No, it wasn't like that because he felt like
it was all his ship anyway, because we were signed
to his production company, so you know, when he comes in,
then the hammer comes down. But you know, I think
some of our greatest moments when we came up with
the dance move the bird, and a lot of the
grooves we came up with were when he wasn't there
what they did show up and you know, a lot

(01:15:30):
of times he liked what we came up with, but
you know, if he didn't, he would say he was
quick to say he didn't.

Speaker 5 (01:15:36):
And sometimes he say.

Speaker 3 (01:15:37):
I don't like that ship, and they turn around and
come back, and he wrote a song with the same
groove that he heard.

Speaker 5 (01:15:44):
So he was just one of them kind of people.

Speaker 6 (01:15:46):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:15:47):
He was good, so with with his with his with
his attention to detail. You know, how hard was it
in trying to bring seven seven, seven ninety three eleven
alive and jelly Bean not really nailing the snare part?

Speaker 5 (01:16:08):
Yeah, well, yeah, you're you're right.

Speaker 1 (01:16:11):
You know, I'm trying to be diplomatic, as.

Speaker 3 (01:16:16):
You know, never really able to grasp that drum beat
but he found a version of it.

Speaker 5 (01:16:23):
I guess that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:24):
No, it works for him. Yeah, that straight on the snare. Yeah,
But okay, how come you guys didn't opt to do
the drum machine thing that the Revolution was doing, because.

Speaker 3 (01:16:34):
You know, we always prided ourselves on being the live band.
No samples, no click tracks, you know, none of that.
So you know, we always opted to you know, whatever
it is, you know, keep it real. You know, I'm
not the greatest thing on the planet. You hear bad Nope,
guess what You're gonna hear a few bad notes if
you come to my concert. But guess what You're going

(01:16:54):
to know that it's me singing, not a perfect track
that I put together that we hit and play just
to get by. You know, it's me doing what I do.

Speaker 1 (01:17:09):
Speaking of seven seven, seven ninety three eleven. Yeah, when
we when we when a lot of us, Jesse was
all too gleeful to let us know that, you know,
Dave Garibaldi's beat number fourteen on the Linn drum, Yeah,
was actually that like that program Like in our minds,

(01:17:33):
we're thinking, like, yo, it's the most genius drum programming
of all time. And Jesse's just all too happy, like
mmm that it was pressed. So at the time, did
you know that Garibaldi had pre programmed the lind drum machine.

Speaker 5 (01:17:51):
Yeah, I absolutely knew that. Oh yeah, that's why I
was cool.

Speaker 3 (01:17:55):
With the you know, using that, you know, because I
was like, hey, this is one of my my drum
rolls beats, you know, so right, so you know, yeah,
you know, so.

Speaker 5 (01:18:04):
I was good with that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:05):
Was he ever made aware that, oh, you guys use
beat number fourteen from what I programmed.

Speaker 3 (01:18:10):
I told him that, you know, I told him when
when when I finally met him, you know, I met
Dave some years later, man, I when I was living
in Vegas. You know, they were doing a show at
one of those small showrooms, and you know, I had
a hot second to go back there and rap with
him and the other guys. And I definitely told him.

Speaker 1 (01:18:30):
Was he familiar with the song?

Speaker 3 (01:18:31):
Like, oh, I'm sure, I'm sure he knew, you know,
probably when he heard the song, he's probably.

Speaker 1 (01:18:36):
Yeah, you know, that's my beat, Okay, I see.

Speaker 3 (01:18:40):
You know, at that point, it's public domain once you
put it on. The drummers come after somebody to say, hey,
that's my beat, you know, because at that point, he's
already been paid for it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:50):
Yeah, yeah, no, No, I didn't even mean for relatitious reasons.
I was meant.

Speaker 4 (01:18:53):
Somebody's thinking that, though I was kidding myself.

Speaker 5 (01:18:55):
It's just me had my little two cents.

Speaker 4 (01:19:00):
In case he's good.

Speaker 1 (01:19:01):
So the thing is with you know, we're rehearsals as
super rigorous as the Prince rehearsals, because again, you guys
only have like I can see you know Brown Mark's
point of like, oh man, we're playing the same group
for four hours, but you know, Brown Mark is also
dealing with the artist that not only has four five

(01:19:22):
albums under his belt at that time, but you know,
other music pouring out of him. But you guys are
basically like in those first two years when you're only
dealing with the six songs. Yeah, it's like, how many
ways did you guys have to perfect something that I'm

(01:19:43):
certain that you had downpacked by a week?

Speaker 3 (01:19:45):
No, well, you know we did. The rehearsals were super rigorous.
That's like that's almost brother, that's almost like saying, how
many ways can you cook eggs? Because you know, we
went in there and we rehearsed the song a certain way,
and then we would flip the arrangements and he would
be there, and I mean, he taught us a work ethic,

(01:20:07):
you know, that was unbelievable. We would rehearse every day,
day in, day out, then go in. Then when the
next single come out, then we would we would flip
the arrangement of the songs, change the arrangements of the song,
and of all the songs.

Speaker 5 (01:20:22):
And then it was just always we rehearsed all the time.
When we weren't on the road, we were rehearsing.

Speaker 1 (01:20:30):
I know, rehears it makes a better band, but the
part of me also felt like maybe just had you
there just to keep you from off the streets or
just you know where my eye was on you.

Speaker 5 (01:20:41):
But possibly, but we rehearsed to the point.

Speaker 3 (01:20:45):
And you know, I mean because if you uh, and
you may have brother question, but if you look at
you know, our shows and all of the things that
we did, you know, with those six songs and once
it turned into twelve songs, and and from there on

(01:21:05):
we had, you know, a lot of choreography, a lot
of of of arrangements, different arrangements from the record, and
it was second nature. We rehearsed so much that you know,
it was second nature. And at one point, you know,
I look at the shows and we were so tight,
you know that it was you know, it was amazing

(01:21:25):
to watch. You know, I'm not I don't even feel
like I can put myself in that mindset to be
as tight as we were. The moves me and Jerome
did together, and the band did together, and the arrangements
they were super tight. And that's like I said, we
had gotten to the point where, you know, people will.

Speaker 5 (01:21:44):
Walk away from the show when we did shows.

Speaker 3 (01:21:46):
With principally man time kicked that ass tonight, you know.
So it was it was intense, and you know, you
might be right about what his motives were. I weren't.
I'm not sure, but I just felt like he just
wanted us to be as tight as we possibly could,
and you know that we definitely achieved.

Speaker 1 (01:22:06):
Okay, So all right now I'm gonna vicariously become a
member of the Time for a second. So, okay, Jellybeans,
no longer your drummer, I'm your drummer. And it's nineteen
eighty two. How much money am I making a week?
When if I'm in the time, by the time that

(01:22:29):
what time is it comes.

Speaker 5 (01:22:29):
Out you make it about one hundred and fifty dollars
a week plus per diem?

Speaker 1 (01:22:38):
Was that quasi normal?

Speaker 4 (01:22:40):
Was?

Speaker 1 (01:22:40):
Well, I got my inflation calculator.

Speaker 4 (01:22:43):
Do you have inflation calculator?

Speaker 1 (01:22:44):
Yes? I do, because I always I'm so derivative of
the past. I even want to know what prices were
back in the day. Yeah, so if all right, so
one hundred and all right, let's be nice and say
that I'm a good drummer that you guys gave me
two hundred dollars. What is that formula?

Speaker 4 (01:23:00):
Yeah, I'm so curious.

Speaker 1 (01:23:02):
Well, you got to get there's literally there's there's an
app called inflation calculator. Well, there you go. So I
thought you were doing math.

Speaker 4 (01:23:11):
Dece' that smart?

Speaker 1 (01:23:13):
I'm quasi smart. So two hundred dollars in nineteen eighty two,
when you get to nineteen eighty one, it is hang on, Yes,
I'm actually solving a math problem.

Speaker 4 (01:23:27):
You just got everybody down loaded down calculated.

Speaker 1 (01:23:30):
Okay, so that would be six hundred and forty dollars today.
That's something kind of paid someone to carry my records. Okay,
I guess I get it. But you get your own room, right, Yeah,
but you know.

Speaker 3 (01:23:48):
Back then, you know, none of us were really used
to a steady paycheck.

Speaker 5 (01:23:53):
You know what I mean, And you know, plus a
per diem. You know, the per diem.

Speaker 2 (01:23:57):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:23:57):
It was another ten to fifteen dollars a day, so
you know, it was okay.

Speaker 3 (01:24:01):
You know, I might have got it up to eight
hundred dollars today by today's standards.

Speaker 1 (01:24:05):
All right, But I'm only well, I'm trying to figure
out the thing is is that in our situation, we
were definitely not making money. So our whole thing was
we're going to stay on the road forever, because once
we come home, that's when we become broke. At least
on the road forever. There's okay, So I ask you
in eighty two, is there such thing as a rider

(01:24:29):
like in my day? I knew early Okay, I want
Golden Grams and Captain Crunch on every show. We want, no,
I mean, but that's how we realized that, Okay, we
get a rider, So we'll make the promoter go to
the supermarket and stock up one. Yeah, brilliant beats right.

(01:24:52):
So I at the end of the tour, I'd mailed home,
you know, fifty boxes of cereal. Now of course. Unfortunately
I became morbal Leo beasts. I've lost the weight, stopped playing.
But I'm saying there's a downside to that too. But
you know, like, are you able to take care of home?

(01:25:16):
I don't know what home is, like get your own apartment,
that sort of thing. Or is it just like hand
of mouth, hand to mouth, hand of mouth. I got
a VCR. Now I'm going back to my aunt's couch.

Speaker 6 (01:25:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:25:29):
No, I I was making more money as as you know,
the band leader. I think, I be honest, I think
I had gotten up to maybe you know, when we
were out there with Prince and toured regularly. I gotten
up to maybe five grand a week.

Speaker 1 (01:25:43):
Nice, that's awesome, that's all, okay, But I was asking
if I was the jone at the time, you were
still getting to you know, six Okay, I get it,
I get it.

Speaker 5 (01:25:54):
So but the rider was was cold cut Sandwiches. That
was our rider.

Speaker 1 (01:26:00):
Okay. May Now traveling wise, like is it fifteen passenger van?
Is it station wagon? Who's driving?

Speaker 3 (01:26:13):
Well, you know, we started out in station wagons and
by the time, you know, we graduated to doing the
tours that we were on the nineteen ninety nine tour,
whatever tours.

Speaker 5 (01:26:23):
Were on, we had our own tour bus.

Speaker 1 (01:26:26):
Okay, I see, all right, Now, the dumbest question I'm
gonna ask, and I've never asked to anyone from Purple.
I don't know. I don't I'm not I'm not a
gotcha journalism person, so I'd never liked like gossipy questions
or whatever, like technical questions. But i just gotta know. Okay,
So you guys are also in the midst of some

(01:26:47):
of the finest women on earth. At least that's how
they were presented to us. Oh yeah again, Ivanity and
now you guys seen Susan, Brendan all them like morning,
So I understand that there's the magic of the makeup
artists and the hair and all stuff. No, no, no,
I'm just saying that I don't expect them to wake

(01:27:08):
up in camou salls and ship. But I'm just saying
you don't.

Speaker 4 (01:27:14):
But Maloney and Vanity was hot in the morning. I
don't care what you say. They woke up like that time.

Speaker 1 (01:27:20):
My whole, my whole point is that in you know,
I know, or at least my perception of how you
guys were were there unspoken ground rules on the cock
blockage tip. Those words, No, I've never heard those words

(01:27:43):
put together. Like, I can't believe I said those words.

Speaker 4 (01:27:46):
I'm very proud of.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
You, Yo dog. I've been in situations where, you know,
motherfucking drum text trying to holler at my joint or whatever,
and like, yo, b that's called fired. Well you know
I'm not that petty, because then I went the beginning.
Oh man, he fired me because I was trying to
talk to.

Speaker 5 (01:28:04):
The unspoken rule was.

Speaker 3 (01:28:06):
They all belong to Prince, so leftovers are good and
if that's if that's what you was down for. The
unspoken rule was, hey, you know, print all mine.

Speaker 4 (01:28:21):
So some nerve can't handle all of them.

Speaker 1 (01:28:25):
That's that's rather amazing. And I don't mean that in
the sort of the PIMPI ish. Wow. I want to
be that when I grow up. But I can't even imagine.

Speaker 4 (01:28:34):
I feel like Jed.

Speaker 1 (01:28:35):
I don't know, I just can't. I can't even I
can't even juggle the Tonight Show, a roots album, a movie,
and a book, and man, my girlfriend, like, imagine three
of them. Isn't that what you're doing? Maybe I'm asking
for tips? How did he do it? Dude, multiple women

(01:28:58):
is the whole thing. I can't. That's like I can't. Yeah, yeah,
So I meant in being around in that atmosphere where
they actually I know that the power of beautiful women around.
Actually they make the best wingmen. You know, they make
the best wingmen almost, So in terms of that, like,

(01:29:20):
what was it like just in general? Oh wait a minute,
I'm sorry, I got to stop this question, Stop this question. No,
I got some more important to ask. Something that just
hit me right now. Jimmy, jim just recently revealed to
me that quote ah cock cock cock co and the
kid can't make you come was your version Vanity's ad

(01:30:01):
lib and Nasty Girl. Yeah, yeah, I know you got Look,
I know I'm talking inside baseball right now. I will

(01:30:21):
explain to you guys way later. Okay, I'm hosting a podcast,
so I gotta explained, ladies and gentlemen, listen. Okay, So,
at the end of Nasty Girl, when Vanity has to
add lips somewhat before the breakdown of the song, she
reaches for a few notes, which one of them is
a high note. Whatever. So I'm assuming that she tried

(01:30:51):
to reach this high note in concert and I'm imagining
that there is some mocking going on of her, maybe
not hitting the notes or whatever, whatever the case was.
There's a skit, and I was talking about these skits earlier.
There's there's a skit. There's a skit where I'm assuming
that that's Mark Mars's orgasm voice, and when he hits

(01:31:17):
his orgasm on this song on the skit, he does
the I don't know it at the time, but he's
doing the vanity adlab whatever, And at first I just
thought he was imitating a chicken. And then Jimmy Zam
reveals to me, No, that was him. That used to
be our inside jokes. So can you can you explain

(01:31:38):
to me the genesis of how.

Speaker 2 (01:31:41):
That.

Speaker 1 (01:31:42):
I don't even think you need to explain it to
me because I can almost imagine that there had to
be some ribbing or teasing going on.

Speaker 5 (01:31:49):
Oh man, Yeah, we used to do that a lot.
You know when we were I couldn't.

Speaker 1 (01:31:52):
Hit on them, so you had to treat him like
second grade sandbox teasing.

Speaker 3 (01:31:56):
I get it, you know, we could, you know, hit
on them, take our best shot.

Speaker 5 (01:32:02):
See how I went.

Speaker 1 (01:32:03):
But you know, situation I just found him about and
mir you don't know about Tony.

Speaker 2 (01:32:14):
And Karmen Electric Oh yes, electric, Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:32:17):
Yeah, I just I never knew how Tony Okay, I'm sorry.
I found out that he allegedly got dismissed because he
crossed that line. Anyway, so finish what you were saying
that was that was.

Speaker 3 (01:32:31):
A line that if you cross was a dismissable lines.
But you know anyway, no, we we just used to
kind of make fun of her and she really would
get pissed.

Speaker 5 (01:32:43):
You know, we walked by the dressing room.

Speaker 3 (01:32:48):
You know, it was just yeah, that was our version
of nasty girls.

Speaker 4 (01:33:01):
Since you ask him dumb questions, gonna ask.

Speaker 1 (01:33:03):
A dumb question, yes, please ask dumb question. But Maris,
I really I really appreciate you. I know you're doing
this just to be polite, Like I thank you for
letting us nerd out on you. I just have to
say that be good.

Speaker 4 (01:33:14):
No do I do too, But this is not my question,
just for everybody else who may have still thought this.
So just officially, Laura's Day and Prince not related, right, wrong,
They are your cousins.

Speaker 5 (01:33:28):
That's that's the story.

Speaker 3 (01:33:30):
But we just we're just brothers and the brother from
another mother. Sense you know, but not blood related at all.

Speaker 4 (01:33:37):
And one more because I know you talk about this
in the book, but I just need to know now
bringing Jerome in, at what point did you was it
thought that he needed to be there? I know Jimmy
told his version of the story and the evolution of
your relationship. Can you just talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:33:54):
Well, you know, Jerome, he's just one of those guys
you know to this day, you know you you you
know Jerome. You know, he's a lovable guy, you know,
and you know he was just there at first. He
was a real valet where and he would collect our luggage.
You know, we're out on the tour bus, you know,

(01:34:15):
twelve o'clock they say, having your luggage outside the door.
Jerome's getting the luggage, he's putting it on the tour bus.
He's getting us pizzas and whatever we want and doing
all that.

Speaker 5 (01:34:25):
And so we go back into rehearsal after the first
tour and.

Speaker 3 (01:34:33):
We're rehearsing cool because that's going to be our second single,
and so you know, we rehearsing. We get to the
part where I say, somebody bring me a mirror, and
you know, Jerome takes off grabs a mirror off the wall,
runs back up, shows up in front of me holding
up a mirror, and everybody just kind of stopped playing.

(01:34:56):
We all looking at each other like that's going to
be in the show. So that was it, you know,
from that moment on, Jerome was part of the band,
and it just evolved from there.

Speaker 4 (01:35:07):
In the pants minds, we just thinkure y'all are just
so close at this point. I don't know, it just
it always felt like that.

Speaker 1 (01:35:12):
No, you know, it got to be that way speak
speaking of Jerome and his duties. Okay, I've asked this
question a lot, practically to every artist that has an
on stage reputation, and the answer never satisfies me. Now,
you're in a very specific situation because in your initial

(01:35:36):
five year iteration, at least of the of the of
the first draft of your your period with the time,
you guys have basically worn the same outfit every time
I've seen you. And the thing that that is that
is baffling to me. And I've seen your I've seen
these concerts and you guys are dancing, moving, sweating and whatnot.

(01:35:58):
When the show is over, are you getting into street clothes?
And how is your your your Presley jacket and your outfit.
How is it clean and ready for the next night show,
especially when you have to do six hours on the
tour bus to the next city. And like, I just

(01:36:20):
never understood how one outfit could sustain, like that's your
everyday outfit.

Speaker 3 (01:36:28):
Well that yeah, that that that pressley uh as I
called it, uh it kind of it was, you know,
it was like a uh is a Linus you know
the security blanket. Man. You know, I don't even know
if the dry cleaner back then because show show. And
then my Stacy's my black and white Stacy's. When I
say about to walk a hole in my Stacy Adams,

(01:36:49):
I looked up and you know, Stacy Adams have some
thick souls on them, right, I had actually walked a hole.
There was a hole in one of them. And so
you know, that's just that's just what it was, man,
And and and the pressley. I wore a thing until
it fell. It basically fell off of me. And after

(01:37:11):
it did, you know, we looked up and I said, Okay,
we're doing well now. So then I start I started
getting custom clothes made from that point on. But you know,
that got me through my first at least tour and
maybe first two tours. And you're right it probably I
was scared to dry clean it because it would have
fell apart a lot sooner.

Speaker 1 (01:37:33):
Where is that original Presley jacket? Now?

Speaker 3 (01:37:36):
I don't know it's it's in uh, it's in stage
clothes heaven, right now, you know, yeah, and I don't.

Speaker 5 (01:37:44):
I have no idea.

Speaker 3 (01:37:45):
It literally fell apart. I looked up one day after
I came off stage and it was hanging off of me,
and that was a sad day for me.

Speaker 1 (01:37:56):
Jacket man.

Speaker 4 (01:37:56):
Yeah, listen, I'm literally in Nashville. The Black is a
museum that should be in there, right, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:38:03):
That's right. That is.

Speaker 3 (01:38:06):
Damn.

Speaker 1 (01:38:07):
I'm sorry, I can't make it. Wow, that's that's crazy.
He was invited. So no, the the movie premieres. So okay,
at what point are you taking Prince seriously when he's saying,
all right, we're going to do a movie. And before

(01:38:28):
I even answer that question, do you have any information
whatsoever about the quote unquote the second Coming movie or
at least you know some some clips have finally wound
up one line of you know, whatever idea he was
flirting with with doing before that morphed into purple Rain, Like,

(01:38:49):
were you guys going to be a part of that
presentation as well? Or was that just him at the time?

Speaker 3 (01:38:53):
Yeah, it must have been just him, because you know,
all I know is, you know, it came to me.
You know, one day it's like, you know, Marris, we're
going to do a movie. I was like, okay, you
know whatever, And then you know, next thing, I know,
we're doing dance classes, we're doing acting classes, and all
of this going on. And I'm still not really taking
it serious because I'd never been involved in anything like that, right,

(01:39:15):
you know, I'm taking it all with a grain of salt.
But the next thing, I know that these directors and
cinematographers and producers are starting to come to town. I
was like, Okay, we're serious now. And next time I know,
we're in production. So I think at that point I
started to take it serious.

Speaker 1 (01:39:34):
Okay. So then by that point it's like, okay, we're
really doing this.

Speaker 5 (01:39:37):
Yeah it's real now.

Speaker 1 (01:39:38):
Yeah, okay, So I okay, I just got to ask,
at what point I assume that you always knew that
Jimmy and Terry got snowed in Atlanta? Correct? Absolutely, Okay,
and at this point, it's it's Jamie. Shoot, that's sort
of you guys's tour manager or your wrangler, if you will,

(01:40:00):
pretty much Okay, So at the point where they're like,
we can't get a flight out, what's happening on your
side of the fence. It's just the four of you,
no base no keyboard player. So at what point do
you realize that you're about to do a timeless show? Like,
are you guys trying to keep this from Prince's camp

(01:40:21):
until the very last minute? Like, at what point do
you have to break down to him and say they
aren't going to make the show?

Speaker 5 (01:40:30):
I think that Prince was.

Speaker 1 (01:40:31):
He was in on it.

Speaker 3 (01:40:32):
You know, he knew more details than I did about it, because,
like I said, you know, we were on tour, you know,
and he was there with us, and he knew that
they weren't going to make the show, and he was
pissed about it because he didn't want any of us
producing or writing for anybody else, or doing anything that wasn't.

Speaker 5 (01:40:51):
Related to the time.

Speaker 1 (01:40:52):
He suspected that they were producing. He knew that for
a fact, or did he just think, like, oh, y'all
fucking around with girls or something?

Speaker 3 (01:40:58):
Now he just knew that they were snowed in, uh
in Atlanta, right, and so guess what he ended up
with on off to the side of stage, playing bass
with the keyboard in front of him. So he actually
played those instruments that night, and we put Jerome over
where Terry would have been.

Speaker 2 (01:41:19):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:41:20):
So we had three people in front, Jesse, Me and
Jerome and we just did the show like that with
Prince playing bass off to the side of the show.

Speaker 1 (01:41:29):
And you put a hat on Jerome and the audience
wasn't any other wiser.

Speaker 3 (01:41:32):
No, we didn't put a hat on him. We just
let him be Jerome, you know, standing in that spot.
But you know they heard the base going just like normal,
so it was all good.

Speaker 1 (01:41:42):
Now, you know, these stadiums aren't totally one. Like, you know,
I'm assuming that somebody from some angle had to see
prints on the side plane, like is he hiding behind
a curtain? Or yeah, how's he seeing? Yeah, how's he
seeing the cues? Or like where's he standing as this
is happening.

Speaker 5 (01:42:01):
He didn't need to see the cues. He knew to
show he needed to show back than we did.

Speaker 1 (01:42:09):
Did it feel just a little bit better when he
was playing bass.

Speaker 5 (01:42:11):
Oh yeah, well it felt good. You know, we didn't
miss sleep man, it was you.

Speaker 1 (01:42:15):
Know, it was it was awesome. Who played keyboards? He
did tandem at the same time.

Speaker 3 (01:42:21):
We had bass and keyboards, so you know, when the
bass was more necessary, he played that, and when the
keyboard was necessary he played that.

Speaker 1 (01:42:30):
Oh wow, okay, I see. So when the acts is
supposed to come down, are you two talking first or
is he just going into executive order action without even
consulting with his senate in his house first? Like, what
should we do?

Speaker 3 (01:42:49):
Executive order? Brother, We're in the studio, I want to
say sunset sound, you know. And he had them come
in and I didn't know we were in. They're cutting
We had cut ice cream castles that day. You know,
I did my vocals and we were just putting some
fishing touches on and you know, Terry and Jimmy come

(01:43:12):
in and I didn't know. I was glad to see him,
you know, And right at that moment he told them,
he said, you know, you guys have fired from the band.
You know you you went to Atlanta, you missed the show,
and you know you're fired. And that, you know, that
hit me like a ton of bricks because my band
was my band. You know, we were all brothers, you know,

(01:43:33):
we had love for each other, and I was always
one of them, you know, I was always one of
those kind of guys that, you know, if Dave Garibaldi
left Tower Power or you know whoever, you know, they
lost an original member, then the band didn't feel the
same to me, right, And I never wanted to be
one of those bands.

Speaker 5 (01:43:54):
And it just hit me like a ton of bricks
that all of a sudden, we're one of those you
know where where what.

Speaker 4 (01:44:02):
Was his name?

Speaker 5 (01:44:03):
He used to saying lead and Sammy Hager.

Speaker 1 (01:44:06):
Came into Yeah, yeah, exactly, Van Healing.

Speaker 3 (01:44:11):
You know, it's just you can't change members, like it's
just not the same. So you know that that that
just hit me like a ton of bricks.

Speaker 1 (01:44:17):
Man, and just no, you were I think you just
had to roll with it.

Speaker 5 (01:44:24):
And yeah, yeah, and I had to roll with it.

Speaker 3 (01:44:25):
And all of a sudden, here comes these new members
and I'm looking back and and that's the moment really
where it really hit me, where it's you know, it's
really time for me to start to think about, uh
going and doing my own thing.

Speaker 1 (01:44:37):
So was he it's so weird because I would imagine that.
I don't know. I never pegged him as being super
confrontational because he's so his image wise was so elusive
or mysterious that I can't you know, I have I've
probably had to fire you know, maybe five people with

(01:44:58):
my entire career, and man, i'd be losing sleep over
that ship at night, called therapist, like, man, how I
do right? Letting people slip?

Speaker 3 (01:45:06):
All right?

Speaker 4 (01:45:07):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:45:07):
Man, just don't let it happen again, please, But like
he was confrontational.

Speaker 3 (01:45:13):
Like that, like just yeah, yeah, cut, just point blank,
just saying whatever's on his mind, just and and and
a lot of times, not really much emotion behind it,
just how you would think of him to talk, you know,
you're fight.

Speaker 5 (01:45:28):
You know, you guys missed to show it's.

Speaker 3 (01:45:29):
Not your priority, you know, and that and that's it.

Speaker 4 (01:45:33):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:45:34):
I wouldn't say necessarily he.

Speaker 1 (01:45:35):
Wasn't afraid of of of confrontational act, you know, because
again it's like I want to make sure I'm covering
my ass because like I mean, not for nothing, but
you also dealing with brothers and ship, right, you know,
So it could have went another way like motherfucker.

Speaker 3 (01:45:48):
You had zon in and then yeah, well you know
he always kept you know, uh, you know, a big
three hundred pounds.

Speaker 4 (01:45:56):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:45:56):
Oh, I forgot about tors off to the side.

Speaker 5 (01:45:59):
You know, he gotten to the point where he just
kept security with him.

Speaker 1 (01:46:02):
So you know, well, are you allowed, are you allowed
to answer back? Are you allowed to say that song
was whack? Or you know, like, are you allowed to
make fun of him?

Speaker 3 (01:46:14):
I always spoke my mind, you know, with him, you know,
and that was that was both good and bad for us.
But you know, I always told him if he played
something for me that I liked, you know, you know,
I would say it, but I wouldn't lie to him,
you know, just like when he played, uh and this
is in the book, you know, but when he played
when Dubs Crying for me. You know, I'm listening to

(01:46:36):
the song and you know, we're we're three three quarters
of the way through the song, and I ain't heard
a bass yet. You know, I'm like, I'm like, I said,
there ain't no bass in the song, man, And and
uh it's like, yeah, that's what I want.

Speaker 5 (01:46:51):
I said, Man, I got out the car.

Speaker 3 (01:46:52):
I said, Man, next time you play something for me,
make sure it's funky and make sure it has some
bass in it.

Speaker 5 (01:46:56):
And I kind of slammed the door, you know what.

Speaker 3 (01:47:04):
And that one, that one kind of came back to
bite me on the ass because it ended up being
a number one smash for me. Right, But when I
first heard it, I wasn't chilling it and I expressed
that to it.

Speaker 1 (01:47:16):
Yeah, I was gonna say, it's so weird because all
of you guys are are characters, and the thing is
is that you know, there's there's a side of himself
that he expresses, especially with sexuality that yes, it works

(01:47:37):
spot on and it's bullseye, but it's also like, you know,
is he going to you guys to be like, look,
I created a new song called do Me Baby. It's
eight minutes long and it's going to be a little awkward,
but listen to it, Like, is it weird where he's
playing you guys like some of his weirder shit where
it's sort of like, Okay, where are you going with this?

(01:48:00):
Or does he just like only give you the funk
shit like okay, this is called nineteen ninety nine or
this is you know, like I'm did he ever get
was it ever an awkward thing when he's showcasing a
song that uh kind of crosses the lines or boundaries,

(01:48:23):
like today there's no line that can't be crossed, like I,
you know, make the Stallion can release some shit and
it's be like, okay, yeah, she's talking about her web
ass pussy. But you know, back in the day, like
someone says, I sincerely want to fuck the taste out
of your mouth. Like yeah, it's like you never heard
that shit before unless it's a Blowfly record. So like
is it awkward in front of you guys where like

(01:48:45):
you're hearing your boss have your five for three boss
have like orgasms on records and shit, yeah, talking talking
in an English accent right right now.

Speaker 5 (01:48:56):
He's especially me.

Speaker 3 (01:48:57):
You know, he would corner me with a lot of stuff,
you know, because that's just how we were back in
the day.

Speaker 5 (01:49:02):
We hung out, you know, we cut you know all
the time.

Speaker 3 (01:49:07):
Like I said, I played a lot on a lot
of his songs, and you know, obviously he played on
just about every time song until maybe after Ice Cream
Castles when we did Pandemonium. Then you know, he started
to kind of slack off, but he would always play
me stuff because I would always be there.

Speaker 5 (01:49:24):
In the studio.

Speaker 3 (01:49:25):
So he's always played and you know I understood his
avant gardener's, his his weirdness and and and he just wanted.

Speaker 5 (01:49:33):
To be different, and you know that was his thing.

Speaker 3 (01:49:36):
And that's that's really what got him, you know, in
trouble at the Rolling Stones concert, because he wanted to
switch from I Want to be Your Lover, you know,
and and all of a sudden he's you know, running
around half naked, you know, playing new wave songs. And
you know, he could have I think, you know, he
could have rose a lot quicker. And he took a

(01:49:58):
dive you know in his popularity and sales for that
Dirty Mind record.

Speaker 5 (01:50:05):
But it took him in a.

Speaker 3 (01:50:06):
Direction that you know, actually led to where he ended
up being. So he was definitely a risk taker. And
he played me a lot of stuff and I just
kind of understood, you know, his thought process, you know,
and some of the stuff I liked, some of.

Speaker 5 (01:50:20):
It I didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:50:22):
Is there a song of his that you wish you
guys had for yourselves? Well, okay, I know that International
Lover was supposed to be for you. Oh yeah, yeah.
At any point, did you actually cut your own version
of it. Oh, where can we You can't.

Speaker 5 (01:50:45):
Unless you can get in the vault, you know you can.
But I sang that song.

Speaker 1 (01:50:50):
I sang. I sang it first, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:50:53):
And then I just think he's decided that he liked it,
you know, more than he thought. And and and then
you know, next thing, I know, I uh, he came
back to me. He's like, I don't like I don't
like your vocals. I don't like what you did, he said,
you know, I said, okay. So then the next thing is,
you know, he's like, well I did it for myself,
you know. So I listened to it, and I was like, well,
that's great, you know, you wrote it. So but he

(01:51:15):
did the same thing with seven seven seven nine three eleven.
You know, I'm up, you know, he said, you know,
I got some stuff to do. I'll leave you sing
the song. I'll come back. I did the vocals. He
came back from wherever he was, and he's like, I
don't like it. You know, you know, he said, I
hate how you sound on it.

Speaker 5 (01:51:32):
Blah blah blah.

Speaker 3 (01:51:33):
I said, uh, okay, cool. So I go back to
the hotel. About nine ten o'clock the next morning, he's
calling me, you know, meet me downstairs in the car.
We're getting a limbo. He's like, I love this man,
I love the way your voice.

Speaker 1 (01:51:50):
So he wasn't he wasn't cutting your vocals half the time?

Speaker 5 (01:51:56):
No I, I you know, I had gotten to the
point where I would do you know, I cut the
vocals myself.

Speaker 4 (01:52:01):
Was it?

Speaker 1 (01:52:01):
Yeah? I was gonna say, is it cutting vocals is
such an intimate experience? Uh?

Speaker 4 (01:52:08):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:52:08):
Were you like, were you uncomfortable if he's sitting there
like micromanaging your vocals or it's just like all right,
I'll leave and come back.

Speaker 3 (01:52:16):
And No, I was very comfortable with him because you know,
he's he's such, you know, such a great producer, you know,
and he knew how to get the best out of me,
and that's why he taught me.

Speaker 4 (01:52:27):
And so you know,

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Hosts And Creators

Laiya St. Clair

Questlove

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

Are You A Charlotte?

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Questlove Supreme: Morris Day